Henry Peter Bosse
Henry Peter Bosse, Foot of Island 50, 1889
Vintage cyanotype, 10 3/8 x 13 in. (26.4 x 33 cm)
Titled and numbered "79a" in ink on print recto.
8623
$18,000
Provenance: Major Alexander Mackenzie (1844–1921), U.S. Army Chief of Engineers.
Prussian born, Henry Peter Bosse (1844–1903), emigrated to the United State in 1870 and settled in Chicago. The United States Army Corps of Engineers hired Bosse as a draughtsman and cartographer to map the upper portion of the Mississippi River between Minneapolis and St. Louis. From 1882 to 1892, he photographer the river and its shores with a large format camera making glass plate negatives which he printed using an oval mask as cyanotypes.
Though it was economical and the same process used by architects to duplicate their line drawings, the captivating blue was one of the many aesthetic choices Bosse made in creating such a distinctive and important body of work of the American landscape.
The cyanotype process is based on the light sensitivity of iron salts, specifically the interaction between iron(III) salts and potassium ferricyanide to form the pigment Prussian blue (ferric ferrocyanide). Prussian blue is responsible for the cyanotype’s characteristic cyan/blue tone.
The cyanotype process was first officially recorded by Sir John Herschel on April 23, 1842.
Read more about the process at graphicsatlas.org.